I started out with a snowflake ornament, and intended this picture to celebrate the first day of winter, but I decided the star looked better. I think it was still appropriate, to celebrate the Light of the world on the longest night of the year. And that year it was also the new moon, so it was the darkest night as well!

“Silent Night! Holy Night!
All is calm, all is bright
'Round yon virgin mother and Child,
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.”

A walk in the birch woods. I created this for an Autumn Colors 3D landscape contest. I used a different method of rendering the lighting which took longer to calculate (basically that's what 3D rendering does, the software calculates the light that would come from every point of the scene through the virtual camera lens), but I loved how warm and soft it made the scene.

“Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon
Rising in clouded Majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw.”
— Paradise Lost

“When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools”—King Lear

I had been to an opera, and one of the acts opened with these multicolored spotlights and three lanterns. I decided to recreate a scene like that for April Fool's Day, and the colors made me think of a harlequin or jester's motley costume.